2137 
/ 1 



)^^. 




j^^^ 



...^ /^ 



:r 






y<^ 



THE SCHOLAR, THE JURIST, THE ARTIST, THE PHILANTHROPIST. 



MR. SUMNER'S ADDRESS 



BEFORE THE 



PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY. 



/ 



.■^r 



THE SCHOLAB, THE JURIST, 



THE AETIST, THE PHILANTHROPIST 



AN ADDRESS 



BEFORE THE 



PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY, 



AT THEIR ANNIVERSARY, AUGUST 27, 1846. 



By CHARLES SUMNER. 



"Then I would say to the young disciple of Truth and Beauty, who would know how to 
satisfy the noble impulse of his heart, through every opposition of the century, — I would say, 
Give the world beneath your influence a direction towards the good, and the tranquil rhythm 
of time will bring its development." — Schiller. 



BOSTON: 

WILLIAM D. TICKNOR AND COMPANY. 

1846. 



5*2 



>\ 



i> 1 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1846, by 

Wm. D. Ticknor and Company, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts. 



GIFT '"^^ 
ESTATE OF 
WJLLIAM C. RiVE8 
X APAJJL, IMa 



CAMBRIDGE: 

METCALF AND COMPANY, 

PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. 



ADDRESS. 



To-day is the festival of our fraternity, sacred to 
learning, to friendship, and to truth. From many 
places, remote and near, we have come together be- 
neath the benediction of Alma Mater. We have w^alked 
in the grateful shelter of her rich embowering trees. 
Friend has met friend, classmate has pressed the hand 
of classmate, while the ruddy memories of youth and 
early study have risen upon the soul. And now we 
have come up to this church, a company of brothers, 
in the long, well ordered procession, commencing with 
the silver locks of reverend age, and closing with the 
fresh forms that glow with the golden blood of youth. 

With hearts of gratitude, we greet among our num- 
ber those whose lives are crowned by desert ; espe- 
cially him who, returning from conspicuous cares in 
a foreign land, now graces our chief seat of learning ; * 
and not less him who, closing an eminent career of 
probity and honor in the high service of the Uni- 
versity, now voluntarily withdraws to a well earned 

* Hon. Edward Everett, President of Harvard University. 



4 



repose.* We salute at once the successor and the 
predecessor, — the rising and the setting sun. And 
ingenuous youth, in whose bosom are enfolded the 
germs of untold excellence, whose ardent soul sees 
visions which are closed to others by the hand of Time, 
commands our reverence, not less than age, rich in 
experience and honor. What we have we know and 
can measure ; that which we have not is unknown 
and immeasurable, and there is in the uncertain prom- 
ises of youth a brightness of hope transcending the 
realities of life. Welcome, then, not less to the young 
than the old ; and may this our holiday brighten with 
harmony and joy ! 

As the eye wanders around our circle, it seeks in 
vain for a beloved form who, for many years, occupied 
the seat which you now fill, Mr. President. I might 
have looked to behold him on this occasion. But death, 
since we last met together, has borne him away. The 
love of friends, the devotion of pupils, the prayers of 
the nation, the concern of the world, could not shield 
him from the inexorable shaft. When I apply to him 
those admirable words which the genius and friend- 
ship of Clarendon bestowed upon Falkland, that " he 
was a person of such prodigious parts of learning and 
knowledge, of such inimitable sweetness and delight 
in conversation, of so flowing and obliging a humanity 
and goodness to mankind, and of that primitive sim- 
plicity and integrity of life,"t I need not add the 
name of Story. To dwell on his character, and all 

* Hon. Josiah Quincy, late President of Harvard University, 
f History of the Rebellion, Book VH. 



that he has done, were a worthy theme. But his is 
not the only dear countenance which returns no an- 
swering smile. 

This year our Society, according to custom, has 
published the catalogue of its members, marking by a 
star the insatiate archery of death in the brief span of 
four years. In no period, equally short, of its history, 
have such shining marks been found. 

" Now kindred merit fills the sable bier, 
Now lacerated friendship claims a tear ; 
Year chases year, decay pursues decay ; 
Still drops some joy from withering life away." * 

Scholarship, Jurisprudence, Art, Humanity, each has 
been called to mourn its chosen champion. Pickering, 
the Scholar, Story, the Jurist, Allston, the Artist, 
Channing, the Philanthropist, have been removed. 
When our last catalogue was published, they were all 
living, each in his field of usefulness. Our catalogue 
of this year gathers them together with the dead. 
Sweet and exalted companionship! They were joined 
in their early lives, in their fame, in their death. They 
were brethren of our fraternity, sons of Alma Mater. 
Story and Channing were classmates. Pickering pre- 
ceded them by two years only ; Allston followed them 
by two years. As we cast our eyes upon the closing 
lustre of the last century, we discern this brilliant 
group, whose mortal light is now obscured. After the 
toils of his long life, Pickering sleeps serenely, in the 
place of his birth, near the honored dust of his father. 
Channing, Story, and Allston have been laid to rest in 

* Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes. 



Cambridge, where they first tasted together of the tree 
of life ; Channing and Story in the sweet, grassy bed 
of Mount Auburn, in the shadow of beautiful trees, 
vocal with choristers of love ; Allston in the adjoining 
church-yard, within sound of his voice who now ad- 
dresses you. 

It was the custom in ancient Rome, on solemn 
occasions, to bring forward the images of departed 
friends, arrayed in their robes of office, and carefully 
adorned, while some one recounted what they had 
done, in the hope of refreshing the memory of their 
deeds, and of inspiring the living with new impulses to 
virtue. "For who," says the ancient historian, "can 
behold without emotion the forms of so many illus- 
trious men, thus living as it were and breathing to- 
gether in his presence ? or what spectacle can be con- 
ceived more great and striking ? " * So, let me ex- 
hibit to-day the images of our departed brothers, not 
in robes of ceremony, or costume of office, but in the 
native colors of their truthful and simple characters. 
And while we dwell with the warmth of personal at- 
tachment upon their virtues, let us seek to comprehend 
and reverence the great interests which they hved to 
promote. Pickering, Story, Allston, Channing ! Their 
names alone, without addition, awaken a response, 
which, like the far-famed echo of the woods of Dodona, 
will prolong itself through the livelong day. But 
great as they are, we feel their insignificance by the 
side of the causes to which their days were conse- 

* Hampton's Polybius, Book "VI. 



crated, — Knowledge, Justice, Beauty, Love, the com- 
prehensive attributes of God. Illustrious on earth, 
the J were the lowly and mortal ministers of lofty and 
immortal truth. It is, then, the Scholar, the Ju- 
rist, THE Artist, the Philanthropist, whom we 
celebrate to-day, and whose pursuits will be the 
theme of my discourse. 

In the presence of these characters, we shall natu- 
rally be lifted far away from the busy hum of selfish 
interests, from the weary pulsations of the great heart 
of Labor, from the madding strifes of the crowd, into 
serener air. It may be pleasant, on this our holiday, 
to range among the fair mountain-tops, to breathe 
their bracing atmosphere, to discern the world in 
diminished scenery below, — its tall spires become as 
pigmies, — and again to descend to the valleys with 
fresh ideas of the heights we should strive to reach. 

In offering these tributes, I shall leave to other occa- 
sions the more appropriate labor of biographical details. 
I shall reverse the order in which our brothers died, 
taking the last first. 

John Pickering, the Scholar, died in the month 
of May, 1846, aged sixty-nine, within a short period 
of that extreme goal which is the allotted limit of human 
life. By scholar, I mean a cultivator of liberal studies, 
a student of knowledge in its largest sense, — not mere- 
ly classical, not excluding what is exclusively called 
science in our days, but which was unknown when the 
title of scholar was first established ; for though Cicero 
dealt a sarcasm at Archimedes, he spoke with higher 



truth when he beautifully recognized the common bond 
between all departments of knowledge. The brother 
whom we now mourn was a scholar, a student, as long 
as he lived. He did not take his place merely among 
what are called, by generous courtesy, Educated Men, 
with most of whom education is past and gone, men 
who have studied; he studied always. Life w^as to 
him an unbroken lesson, pleasant with the sweets of 
knowledge and the consciousness of improvement. 

The world knows and reveres his learning; they 
only, whose privilege it was to partake somewhat of 
his daily life, fully know the modesty of his character. 
His knowledge was such that he seemed to be igno- 
rant of nothing, while in the perfection of his humility 
he might seem to know nothing. By learning con- 
spicuous before the world, his native diffidence with- 
drew him from its personal observation. Surely learning 
so great, which claimed so little, will not be forgotten. 
The modesty which detained him in retirement during 
life shall introduce him now that he is dead. Strange 
reward ! The merit which shrank from the living gaze 
shall now be observed of all men. The soft voice of 
humility is returned in pealing echoes from the tomb. 

In speaking of Pickering, I place in the front his 
modesty and his learning, the two attributes by which 
he will always be remembered. I might enlarge on 
his sweetness of temper, his simplicity of life, his kind- 
ness to the young, his sympathy with studies of all 
kinds, his sensibility to beauty, his conscientious char- 
acter, his passionless mind. Could he speak to us 
with regard to himself, he might employ the words of 



self- painting which dropped from the kindly pen of his 
great predecessor in the cultivation of Grecian litera- 
ture, the leader in its revival in Europe, as Pickering 
was in some sort in America, the urbane and learned 
Erasmus. " For my own part," says the early scholar 
to his English friend, John Colet, " I best know my 
own faihngs, and therefore shall presume to give a char- 
acter of myself. You have in me a man of little or no 
fortune, a stranger to ambition, of a strong propensity 
to loving-kindness and friendship, without any boast of 
learning, but a great admirer of it ; one who has a 
profound veneration for any excellence in others, how- 
ever he may feel the want of it in himself; who can 
readily yield to others in learning, but to none in in- 
tegrity; a man sincere, open, and free; a hater of 
falsehood and dissimulation ; of a mind lowly and up- 
right ; who boasts of nothing but an honest heart." * 
I have called him the scholar ; for it is in this char- 
acter that he leaves so choice an example of excel- 
lence. But the triumphs of his life are enhanced by 
the variety of his labors, and especially by his long 
career at the bar. He was a lawyer, whose days were 
worn in the faithful and uninterrupted practice of his 
profession, busy with clients, careful of their concerns, 
both in court and out of court. Each day witnessed 
his untiring exertions in scenes of labor having little 
that was attractive to his gentle and studious nature. 
He was formed to be a seeker of truth rather than a 
defender of wrong, and he found less delight in the 
hoarse strifes of the bar than in the peaceful conversa- 

* Erasmi Epist., Lib. V., Ep. 4. 
2 



10 



tion of books. To him litigation was a sorry feast, 
and a well filled docket of cases not unlike the cu- 
rious and now untasted dish of " thistles " which 
sometimes formed a part of a Roman banquet. He 
knew that the duties of the profession were important 
and useful ; but felt that even their successful perform- 
ance, when unattended by a generous juridical culture, 
gave a slender title to regard, while they were less 
pleasant and ennobling far than the disinterested pur- 
suit of learning. He would have said, at least as re- 
gards his own profession, with the Lord Archon of 
the Oceana, " I will stand no more to the judgment of 
lawyers and divines than to that of so many other 
tradesmen^ * 

* Harrington's Oceana, 134. Milton, in his tract upon Education, 
says, — " Some are allured to the trade of the latv, grounding their pur- 
poses not on the prudent and heavenly contemplation of justice and 
equity, which was never taught them, but on the promising and pleasing 
thoughts of litigious terms, fat contentions, and flowing fees." It is to 
be hoped that the words of Socrates, sharply sketching the moral dan- 
gers of professional and public life, are less applicable to our country than 
to ancient Athens. "It seems to me," says the wisest of Greeks, " that 
men trained from their youth in the tribunals and in affairs, compared 
with those nurtured by philosophy, are like slaves by the side of free- 
men Their disputes are never without some consequence ; 

there always enters into them some personal interest, often even that of 
life ; all this renders them sharp and ardent, skilful to win their master 
by flattering words, and to please him by their actions ; but they have 
neither rectitude nor moral grandeur of soul ; for the servitude in which 
they engage from their youth prevents them from developing themselves, 
takes from them all elevation and nobleness, in constraining them to act 
by oblique ways ; and, as it exposes their souls, yet tender, to great dan- 
gers and apprehensions which they have not sufficient hardihood to affront 
in the name of justice and truth, they have early recourse to falsehood 
and to the art of injuring one another ; they bend and twist in a thousand 
ways, and pass from youth to ripe age with a soul thoroughly corrupted, 



11 



It was the law as a trade, that he pursued reluc- 
tantly ; while he had especial happiness in the science 
of jurisprudence, to which he devoted many hours, res- 
cued from other cares. By his example, and the various 
contributions of his pen, he elevated and adorned the 
study, and invested it with the charm of liberal pur- 
suits. By marvellous assiduity, he was able to lead 
two lives, one producing the fruits of earth, the other 
those of immortality. In him was the union, rare as 
it is grateful, of the lawyer and the scholar. He 
has taught us how much may be done, amidst the toils 
of professional life, for the high concerns of jurispru- 
dence and learning ; while the clear and enduring lustre 
of his name, dimming the glowworm scintillations of 
ordinary forensic success, reminds us, as by contrast, of 
the feeble and fugitive fame which is the lot of the 
mere lawyer^ although clients may beat at his gates 
from the earliest cock-crowing at the dawn. 

It would be impossible, on this occasion, to describe 
his multitudinous labors of scholarship. They were 
of a character that is but slightly appreciated by the 
world at large, although important contributions to the 
general sum of knowledge. They were chiefly directed 
to two subjects, — classical studies and general philol- 
ogy, if these two may be regarded separately. 

His early life was marked by a special interest in 
classical studies. At a time when accurate and exten- 
sive scholarship in our country was rare, he aspired to 

while they imagine that they have acquired much cleverness and wis- 
dom." Plato, Theaetetus, cap. xxiii. Pickering was nurtured by phi- 
losophy, and his soul had the purity of freedom. 



12 



possess it. By daily and nightly studies he mastered 
the great exemplars of antiquity, and found delight in 
their beauties. His example, for many years, exerted 
a potent influence in commending them. But he 
sought, by peculiar exertions, to promote their study 
in the learned seminaries of our country. With un- 
answerable force, he urged the duty of establishing a 
standard of education among us, in every substantial 
respect commensurate with that in Europe. It was 
his desire to see the American youth receiving on their 
native soil, under the precious influence of free insti- 
tutions, a course of instruction that should render for- 
eign aid superfluous. He had a just pride of country, 
and wished to behold its character respected abroad in 
the persons of accomplished representatives, well know- 
ing that every American scholar, wherever he wanders 
in foreign lands, is a living recommendation of the in- 
stitutions under which he has been reared. 

He knew that scholarship of all kinds would gild 
the life of its possessor ; that it would enlarge the 
resources of the advocate ; that it would enrich the 
voice of the pulpit ; and strengthen the learning of 
medicine. He knew that it would afford a pleasant 
companionship in hours of relaxation from labor, in 
periods of sadness, and in the evening of life ; that, 
when once embraced, it was more constant than 
friendship, — attending its votary, as an invisible spirit, 
in the toils of the day, in the watches of the night, 
in the changes of travel, in the alternations of fortune 
and health. 

In commending classical studies, it would be diffi- 



13 



cult to say that he attached to them any undue im- 
portance. He showed, by his own example, that he 
bore them no exclusive love. He rightly regarded 
them as an essential part of liberal education, opening 
the way to other realms of knowledge, while they 
matured the taste and invigorated the understanding. 
In this view all will probably concur. It might be 
questioned, however, whether, in our hurried life, it 
were possible, with proper attention to other studies, 
to introduce into ordinary education the exquisite 
skill which is the pride of English scholarship, re- 
minding us of the minuteness of finish in Chinese 
art ; or the ponderous and elaborate learning which 
is the wonder of Germany, reminding us of the dis- 
proportion and unnatural perspective of a Chinese 
picture. But much may be done by the establishment 
of those habits of accuracy, the result of early and 
careful instruction, which will aid in the appreciation 
of the severe beauty of antiquity, while they become 
an invaluable standard and measure of our attain- 
ments in other things. 

The classics possess a peculiar charm, from the cir- 
cumstance, that they have been the models, I might 
almost say the masters, of composition and thought in 
all ages. In the contemplation of these august 
teachers of mankind, we are filled with conflicting 
emotions. They are the early voice of the world, 
better remembered and more cherished still than all the 
intermediate words that have been uttered, — as the 
lessons of childhood still haunt us, when the impres- 
sions of later years have been effaced from the mind. 



14 



But they show with most unwelcome frequency the 
tokens of the world's childhood, before passion had 
yielded to the sway of reason and the affections. 
They want the highest charm of purity, of righteous- 
ness, of elevated sentiments, of love to God and man. 
It is not in the frigid philosophy of the Porch and the 
Academy that we are to seek these ; not in the mar- 
vellous teachings of Socrates, as they come mended 
by the mellifluous words of Plato ; not in the re- 
sounding line of Homer, on whose inspiring tale of 
blood Alexander pillowed his head ; not in the ani- 
mated strain of Pindar, where virtue is pictured in 
the successful strife of an athlete at the Isthmian 
games ; not in the torrent of Demosthenes, dark with 
self-love and the spirit of vengeance ; not in the fitful 
philosophy and intemperate eloquence of Tully ; not 
in the genial libertinism of Horace, or the stately 
atheism of Lucretius. No ; these must not be our 
masters ; in none of these are we to seek the way of 
life. For eighteen hundred years, the spirit of these 
writers has been engaged in weaponless contest with 
the Sermon on the Mount, and those two sublime 
commandments on which hang all the law and the 
prophets.* The strife is still pending. Heathenism, 

* Terence, taught, perhaps, by his own bitter experience as a slave, 
has given expression to truth almost Christian, when he says, 
" Homo sum J humani nihil a me alienum puto." 

Heauton. A. 1, So. 1. 
and in the Andria, 

" Facile omnes perferre at pati 
Cum quibus erat cunque una ; iis sese dedere, 
Eorum obsequi studiis, advorsus nemini, 
Nunquam prasponens se aliis." 

A, l,So. 1. 



15 



which has possessed itself of such Siren forms, is not 
yet exorcised. It still tempts the joung, controls the 
affairs of active life, and haunts the meditations of 
age. 

Our own productions, though they may yield to those 
of the ancients in the arrangement of ideas, in method, 
in beauty of form, and in freshness of illustration, 
are immeasurably superior in the truth, delicacy, and 
elevation of their sentiments, — above all, in the be- 
nign recognition of that great Christian revelation, 
the brotherhood of man. How vain are eloquence and 
poetry, compared with this heaven-descended truth ! 
Put in one scale that simple utterance, and in the 
other the lore of Antiquity, with its accumulating 
glosses and commentaries, and the last will be light 
and trivial in the balance. Greek poetry has been 
likened to the song of the nightingale as she sits in the 
rich, symmetrical crown of the palm-tree, trilling her 
thick-warbled notes ; but even this is less sweet and 
tender than the music of the human heart. 

These things cannot be forgotten by the Christian 
scholar. Let him draw from the Past all that it has 
to contribute to the great end of life, human progress 
and happiness ; progress, without which happiness is 
vain. But let him close his soul to the pernicious in- 
fluence of that spirit, which is the more to be dreaded, 
as it is insinuated in compositions of such command- 
ing authority. 

In the department of philology, kindred to that of 
the classics, our scholar labored with peculiar success. 



16 



Unless some memorandum should be found among 
his papers, as was the case with Sir William Jones, 
specifying the languages to which he had been de- 
voted, it may be difficult to frame a list with entire 
accuracy. It is certain that he was familiar with at 
least nine, — the English, French, Portuguese, Italian, 
Spanish, German, Romaic, Greek, and Latin ; of 
these he spoke the first five. He was less familiar, 
though well acquainted, with the Dutch, Swedish, 
Danish, and Hebrew ; and had explored, with various 
degrees of care, the Arabic, Turkish, Syriac, Persian, 
Coptic, Sanscrit, Chinese, Cochin-Chinese, Russian, 
Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Malay in several dialects, 
and particularly the Indian languages of America and 
of the Polynesian islands. His labors span immeas- 
urable spaces in the world's history, — embracing the 
distant, primeval Sanscrit ; the hieroglyphics of Egypt, 
now awakening from their mute sleep of centuries ; 
the polite and learned tongues of ancient and modern 
Europe ; the languages of Mohammedanism ; the va- 
rious dialects of the forests of North America, and of 
the sandal-groves of the Pacific ; only closing with a 
lingua franca, from an unlettered tribe on the coast 
of Africa, to which his attention had been called even 
after the illness which ended in his death. 

This recital alone shows the variety and extent of 
his studies in a department which is supposed to be 
inaccessible, except to peculiar and Herculean toils. 
He had a natural and intuitive perception of the 
affinities of languages, and of their hidden relations ; 
and his labors and researches have thrown important 



17 



light upon the general principles that prevail in this 
science, as also on the history and character of indi- 
vidual languages. In devising an alphabet of the In- 
dian tongues of North America, which has been 
since adopted in the Polynesian islands, he render- 
ed brilliant service to civilization.* It is pleasant 
to contemplate the scholar sending forth from his 
seclusion this priceless instrument of improvement. 
On the beauteous islands once moistened by the 
blood of Cook, newspapers and books are printed in 
a native language, which was reduced to a written 
character by the care and genius of Pickering. The 
Vocabulary of Americanisms, and the Greek and 
English Lexicon, attest still further the variety and 
value of his labors ; nor can we sufficiently ad- 
mire the facility with which, amidst the duties of 
an arduous profession, and other efforts of scholarship, 
he assumed the appalling task of the lexicographer. 

It is not uncommon to listen to expressions in dis- 
paragement of the labors of the philologist, treating 
them sometimes as curious only, sometimes as trivial, 
or, when they enter into lexicography, sometimes as 
those of a harmless drudge. It might be sufficient to 
reply to these, that the exercise of the intellect in 
a manner calculated to promote forgetfulness of self, 
and the love of science opening a taste for new and 



* There is in the correspondence of Leibnitz a proposition for a new 
alphabet of the Arabic, ^thiopic, Syriac, and other languages, which 
seems to be not unlike, in principle, that of Pickering. — Leibnitz, 
Opera (ed. Dutens), Vol. VI., p. 88. 
3 



18 



simple pleasures, is really, though perhaps indirectly, 
ministering to human improvement. But philology 
may claim other suffrages. It is its province to aid 
in determining the character of words, their extrac- 
tion, their signification, and in other ways to guide 
and explain the development of language ; nor is it 
generous, while enjoying the flowers of poetry and 
the rich fruits of literature, to withhold our gratitude 
from him who spends his hours in exploring the roots 
and in training the tree. 

But the science of Comparative Philology, which 
our scholar has illustrated so highly, may rank with 
the most brilliant pursuits. It boldly challenges a 
place by the side of that science which received such 
development from the genius of Cuvier. The study 
of Comparative Anatomy has thrown unexpected light 
on the physical history of the animate creation ; but 
it cannot be less interesting or important to explore 
the unwritten history of the human race in the lan- 
guages that have been spoken, to trace their pedigree, to 
detect their affinities, seeking the great prevailing laws 
by which they are governed. As we understand these 
things, confusion and discord retreat, the frater- 
nity of mankind stands confessed, and the philol- 
ogist becomes a minister at the altar of universal 
philanthropy. In the study of the past, he learns to 
anticipate the future ; and he sees with Leibnitz, in 
sublime vision, the distant prospect, in the succession 
of ages, of that Unity of the human race, which shall 
find its expression in an instrument more marvellous 



19 



than the Infinite Calculus, a universal language, com- 
posed of an alphabet of human thoughts.* 

As the sun draws moisture from the rill, from the 
stream, from the lake, from the ocean, again to be 
returned in fertilizing showers upon the earth, so did 
our scholar derive knowledge from all sources, again 
to be diffused in beneficent influences upon the world. 
He sought it, not only in studies of all kinds, but in 
converse with men, and in the experience of life. His 
curious essay on the Pronunciation of the Ancient 
Greek Language was suggested by listening to the 
words which fell from some Greek sailors, whom the 
temptations of commerce had conducted from their 
tideless sea to our shores. 

Such a character, devoted to labors of wide and 
enduring interest, not restrained or hemmed in by 
international lines, naturally awakened respect and 
honor, wherever learning was cultivated. His name 
was proudly associated with many of the most illus- 
trious fraternities of science in foreign nations, while 
scholars who could not know him face to face, by an 
amiable commerce of letters, sought the aid and sym- 
pathy of his learning. His death has broken these 
living links of fellowship ; but his name, that cannot 
die, shall continue to bind all who love knowledge and 
virtue to the land which was blessed by his presence. 

From the Scholar I pass to the Jurist. Joseph 



* Fontenelle, Eloge de Leibnitz. Leibnitz, Opera (ed. Dutens), Yol. 
v., p. 7. 



20 



Story died in the month of September, 1845, aged 
sixty-six. His countenance, so familiar in this pres- 
ence, was always so beaming with goodness and kind- 
ness, that its withdrawal seems to lessen most sensibly 
the brightness of the scene. We are assembled near 
the seat of his most pleasant pursuits, among the 
neighbours familiar with his private virtues, close by 
the home hallowed by his domestic altar. These 
paths he often trod ; and all that our eyes may here 
look upon seems to reflect his benignant regard. His 
intimate official relations with the University, his high 
judicial station, his higher character as a jurist, invest 
his name with a peculiar interest ; while the uncon- 
scious kindness which he ever showed to all, and es- 
pecially to the young, makes them rise up and call 
him blessed. How fondly would the youth nurtured 
in jurisprudence at his feet, were such an offering, 
Alcestis-like, within the allotments of Providence, — 

*' similis si permutatio detur," * — 

have prolonged their beloved master's days at the ex- 
pense of their own ! 

This University has already, by the voice of his 
learned associate, rendered its tribute of respect to 
his name. The tribunals of justice, throughout the 
country, have given utterance to their solemn grief; 
and the funeral torch has passed across the sea into 
foreign lands. 

He has been heard to confess that literature was his 
earliest passion, which yielded only to the stern sum- 



* Juvenal, VL, 653. 



21 



mons of duty, beckoning him to the toils of profes- 
sional life ; and they who knew him best cannot for- 
get that this sentiment pervaded his days, as with the 
perfume of flowers. He continued to the last fond of 
poetry and polite letters, and would often turn from 
the austere countenance of Themis to the more kindly 
Muses. Nor can it be doubted that this feature, 
which points the resemblance between him and Sel- 
den, Somers, Mansfield, and Blackstone, in England, 
and L'Hopital and D'Aguesseau, in France, has added 
to the brilliancy and perfection of his character as a 
jurist. It would not be easy in the history of juris- 
prudence to mention a single name to whom its high- 
est palm belongs, who was not a scholar. 

The hardships of the early study of the law, which 
had perplexed the youthful spirit of Spelman, beset 
him with disheartening force. Let the young remem- 
ber his trials and his triumphs, and be of good cheer. 
According to the custom of his day, while yet a stu- 
dent of law, in the town of Marblehead, he under- 
took to read Coke on Littleton, in the large folio edi- 
tion, thatched over with those manifold annotations 
which cause the best trained lawyer "to gasp and 
stare." As he strove in vain to force his weary way 
through its rugged page, he was filled with despair. 
It was but for a moment. The tears poured from his 
eyes upon the open book. Those tears were his pre- 
cious baptism into the learning of the law. From that 
time forth, he persevered with confirmed ardor and 
confidence, without let or hindrance. 

He was elevated to a seat on the bench of the Su- 



22 



preaie Court of the United • States, by the side of 
Marshall, at the early age of thirty- two. It was at 
the same age that Bailer, unquestionably the ablest 
judge of Westminster Hall, who did not arrive at the 
honors of Chief Justice, was induced to renounce an 
income larger than the salary of a judge, to take a 
seat by the side of Mansfield. The parallel continues. 
During the remainder of Mansfield's career on the 
bench, Buller was the friend and associate upon whom 
he chiefly leaned for support; and history records that 
it was a darling desire of the venerable chief justice, 
that his younger associate should succeed to his seat 
and chain of office ; but these wishes, the hopes of the 
profession, and his own long services were disregarded 
by a minister who seldom rewarded any but political 
labors, — I mean Mr. Pitt. Our brother, like Buller, 
was the friend and associate of his venerable chief 
justice, by whose side he sat for many years ; nor do I 
state any fact which is not proper in the light of his- 
tory, when I add that it was the long-cherished de- 
sire of Marshall that Story should be his successor. 
It was ordered otherwise ; and he continued a justice 
of the Supreme Court of the United States for the 
space of thirty-four years, — a judicial life of almost 
unexampled length in the history of the common law, 
of precisely the same duration with that of D'Agues- 
seau, the consummate chancellor of France. 

As a judge, he was called upon to administer a most 
extensive jurisdiction, embracing matters which, in 
England, never come before any single judge ; and in 
each department he has shown himself second to none 



23 



other, unless we unite with him in deferring to Mar- 
shall as the highest expounder of a branch peculiar to 
ourselves, constitutional law. Nor will it be easy to 
mention any judge who has left behind so large a 
number of opinions which take their place in the first 
class. It happens to some to excel in a special branch, 
to which their learning and. labor have been directed. 
He excelled in all. He was at home in the feudal 
niceties of real law, with its dependencies of descents, 
remainders, and executory devises ; also in the hair- 
splitting technicalities of special pleading,— both crea- 
tures of an illiterate age, gloomy with black-letter and 
verbal subtilties ; he employed and expounded with 
freedom and skill the rules of evidence, the product 
of a more refined period of juridical history ; he was 
master of the common law of contracts, of the wide 
and interesting expanse of commercial law, embracing 
so large a part of those topics which most concern the 
business of our age ; he was familiar with the criminal 
law, which he administered with the learning of a 
judge and the tenderness of a parent ; he had com- 
passed the whole circle of chancery, both in its juris- 
diction and its pleadings, touching, as it does, all the 
interests of life, and subtilely adapting the common law 
to our own age ; and he ascended with ease to those 
heights of jurisprudence, less trod than others, where 
are extended the open, pleasant demesnes of the 
admiralty and public law, embracing the law of prize, 
and that theme into which enters history, the life of 
man, philosophy, learning, literature, all that human 
experience has recorded or established, and that Chris- 
tianity has declared, the Law of Nations. 



24 



But it was not as a judge only that he labored. He 
sought still other means of illustrating the science of 
the law, and added to the cares of judicial life the 
responsibilities of an author and a teacher. He was 
moved to this by his love of the science, by his desire 
to aid in its elucidation, and by the irrepressible in- 
stincts of his nature, which found in incessant activity 
the truest repose. He was of that rare and happy 
constitution of mind in which occupation is the normal 
state. He had a genius for labor. Others may moil 
in the law as constantly as he, but without his loving 
earnestness of study. What he undertook he always 
did with his heart, soul, and mind ; not with reluctant, 
vain compliance, but with his entire nature bent to the 
task. As in his friendships and in the warmth of soci- 
ety, so he was in his studies. His heart embraced la- 
bor, as his hand grasped the hand of friend. 

As a teacher, he should be gratefully remembered 
here. He was Dane Professor of Law in the Uni- 
versity. By the attraction of his name students were 
drawn from the most remote parts of the Union ; and 
the Law School, which had been a sickly branch, 
became the golden mistletoe of our ancient oak. Be- 
sides learning unsurpassed in his profession, which he 
brought to these duties, he displayed other qualities 
which are not less important in the character of a 
teacher, — goodness, benevolence, and a willingness 
to teach. Only a good man can be a teacher ; only a 
benevolent man ; only a man willing to teach. He 
was filled with a desire to teach. He sought to min- 
gle his mind with that of his pupil. He held it a 



25 



blessed office to pour into the souls of the young, as 
into celestial urns, the sweet waters of knowledge. 
The kindly enthusiasm of his nature found its re- 
sponse. The law, which is sometimes supposed to be 
harsh and crabbed, became inviting under his instruc- 
tions. Its great principles, drawn from the wells of 
experience and reflection, from the sacred rules of right 
and wrong, from the unsounded depths of Christian 
truth, illustrated by the learning of sages and the 
judgments of courts, he unfolded so as best to inspire 
a love for their study, well knowing that the knowl- 
edge we may impart is trivial, compared with that 
awakening of the soul under the influence of which 
the pupil himself becomes a teacher. All of knowl- 
edge we can communicate is finite ; a few pages, a 
few chapters, a few volumes, will embrace it ; but 
such an influence is incalculable in its extent. It is 
another soul ; it is the breath of a new life. Story 
taught as a Priest of the law, seeking to consecrate 
other Priests. In him the spirit spake, not with the 
voice of an earthly calling, but with the softness, 
the gentleness, the self-forgetful earnestness of one 
pleading in behalf of justice, of knowledge, of human 
happiness. His well-loved pupils hung upon his lips, 
and, as they left his presence, confessed a more ex- 
alted reverence for virtue, and a warmer love of 
knowledge for its own sake. 

The spirit which filled his teachings here inspired 
his life. He was, in the truest sense of the term, a 
Jurist, a student and expounder of jurisprudence as a 
science ; not merely a lawyer or a judge, pursuing it 

4 



26 



as an art. This distinction, though readily perceived, 
is not always regarded. 

The members of the profession, whether on the 
bench or at the bar, rarely send their regards beyond 
the matter directly before them. The lawyer is too 
often content with the applause of the court-house, 
the approbation of clients, " fat contentions and flow- 
ing fees." Too seldom in his life does he render 
voluntary aid in the development of any principle 
which can be felt widely beyond the limited circle in 
which he moves, or which can help to carry forward 
or secure the landmarks of justice. The judge, in 
the discharge of his duty, applies the law to the cases 
before him. He may do this discreetly, honorably, 
justly, benignly, in such wise that the community, 
who have looked to him for justice, shall pronounce 
his name with gratitude ; — 

" that his bones, 
When he has run his course and sleeps in blessings, 
May have a tomb of orphan's tears wept on 'em." * 

But the function of the mere lawyer and judge, 
both of them practising law, is widely different from 
that of the jurist, who, whether judge or lawyer, ex- 
amines every principle in the light of science, and 
seeks, while he does justice, to widen and confirm the 
means of justice hereafter. All ages have abounded 
in lawyers and judges ; there is no church-yard that 
does not contain their forgotten dust. But the jurist 
is rare. The judge passes the sentence of the law 
upon the prisoner at the bar face to face, — but the 

* Henry VIII. , Act 3, Scene 2. 



27 



jurist, invisible to mortal sight, jet speaks ; as was 
said of the Roman law, swaying by the reason, when 
he has ceased to govern by the living voice. Such a 
character does not live merely for the present, wheth- 
er in time or place. He lifts himself alof^:, above its 
petty temptations, and, yielding neither to the love of 
gain nor to the seductions of a loud and short-lived 
praise, perseveres in those serene labors which help 
to build the mighty dome of justice, beneath which all 
men are to seek harmonious shelter. 

It is not uncommon to listen to the complaints of 
lawyers and judges, as they liken their fame to that 
of the well-graced actor, of whose hold on the public 
mind only uncertain traces remain, when his voice has 
ceased to charm. But they labor for the present only. 
How can they hope to be remembered beyond the 
present ? They are, for the most part, the instru- 
ments of a temporary and perishable purpose. How 
can they hope for the gratitude which attends labors 
that are imperishable and eternal ? They do nothing 
for all. How can they think to be remembered beyond 
the operation of their labors ? So far forth, in time or 
place, as a man's beneficent influence is felt, so far will 
he be gratefully commemorated. Happy may he be, 
if he has done aught to connect his name with the 
great principles of justice ! 

In the world's history, the lawgivers are among the 
highest and most godlike characters. They are the 
reformers of nations. They are the builders of human 
society. They are the fit companions of the master 
poets, who fill it with their melody. Man will never 
forget Homer, Virgil, Dante, Shakspeare, Milton, 



28 



Goethe ; nor those other names of creative force, 
Minos, Solon, Ljcurgus, Numa, Justinian, St. Louis, 
Napoleon. Each of these is too closely linked to 
human progress not to be always remembered. 

In their train follow the company of jurists, whose 
labors have the iaiportance without the form of legis- 
lation, and who, by their recorded opinions, uttered 
from the chair of a professor, from the bench of a judge, 
or, it may be, from the seclusion of private life, con- 
tinue to rule the nations. Here are Papinian, Tribo- 
nian, Paulus, Gains, the ancient time-honored mas- 
ters of the Roman law ; Cujas, its most illustrious ex- 
pounder in modern times, of whom D'Aguesseau said, 
" Cujas has spoken the language of the law better 
than any modern, and perhaps as well as any ancient," 
and whose renown was such during his life, in the 
golden age of jurisprudence, that in the public schools 
of Germany, when his name was mentioned, all took 
off their hats ; Dumoulin, the relative of Queen 
Elizabeth of England, and, like his contemporary, 
Cujas, the pride of France, of whose municipal law 
he was the most illustrious expounder, — of one of 
whose books it was said it had accomplished what 
thirty thousand soldiers of his monarch had failed to 
do ; Hugo Grotius, the author of that great work, — 
at times divine, alas ! at other times too much of this 
earth, — the Laws of Peace and War; Pothier, whose 
professor's chair was kissed in reverence by pilgrims 
from afar, who sent forth from his recluse life those 
treatises which enter so largely into the invaluable 
codes of France; the crabbed character, Lord Coke, and 
the silver-tongued magistrate. Lord Mansfield, both 



29 



of whom are among the few exemplars which the juris- 
prudence of the common law may boast in England ; 
and, descending to our own day, Pardessus, of France, 
to whom commercial and maritime law^ is under a 
larger debt, perhaps, than to any single mind ; Thibaut, 
of Germany, the earnest and successful advocate of a 
just scheme for the reduction of the unwritten law to 
the certainty of a written text ; Savigny, who is still 
spared to us, the great living illustrator of the Roman 
law ; Romagnosi, that heroic spirit of modern Italy, 
only lately called before the seat of justice in heaven ; 
and in our own country, one now happily among us 
to-day, by his son,* — James Kent, the unquestioned 
living head of American jurisprudence. These are 
among the jurists. Let them not be confounded with 
the lawyer, bustling with forensic success, although in 
his life, like Dunning, he may have been the arbiter of 
Westminster Hall, or, like Pinkney, the acknowledged 
chief of the American bar. The great jurist is high- 
er far than the lawyer; as Watt, who invented the 
steam-engine, is higher than the journeyman who feeds 
its fires and pours oil upon its irritated machinery; 
as Washington is more exalted than the Swiss who 
sells the vigor of his arm and the sharpness of his spear 
to the largest bidder. 

The lawyer is the honored artisan of the law. He 
may be surrounded with all the tokens of worldly suc- 
cess, filling the mind, perhaps, wdth visions destined 



* Hon. William Kent, recently appointed Roy all Professor of Law in 
Harvard University. 



30 



early to be dispersed; but his labors are on the things 
of to-day. His name is written on the sandy margin 
of the sounding sea, soon to be washed away by the 
embossed foam of the tyrannous wave. Not so is the 
jurist's. His is inscribed high on the immortal tablets 
of the law. The ceaseless flow of ages does not wear 
away their indestructible front ; the hour-glass of time 
refuses to measure the period of their duration. 

It is into the company of jurists that Story has now 
passed. It is this which secures him a place, not only 
in the history of his country, but in all history. It was 
a saying of his, often uttered in the confidence of 
friendship, that a man is to be measured by the horizon 
of his mind, whether it embraced the village, town, 
county, or state in which he lived, or the whole broad 
country, ay, the circumference of the world. In this 
spirit he lived and wrought, elevating himself above 
the present, both in time and place, and always find- 
ing in jurisprudence an absorbing interest. Only a 
few days before the illness which ended in his death, 
it was suggested to him, in conversation with regard 
to his life, on his intended retirement from the bench, 
that a wish had been expressed by many to see him a 
candidate for the highest political office of the country. 
He replied at once, spontaneously, and without hesi- 
tation, " That the station of President of the United 
States would not tempt him from his professor's chair, 
and the calm pursuit of jurisprudence." Thus spoke 
the Jurist. As a lawyer, a judge, a professor, he was 
always a jurist. While administering justice between 
parties, he sought to extract from their cause the ele- 



31 



merits of future justice, and to advance the science of 
the law. He staaiped upon his judgments a value 
which is not restrained to the occasions on which they 
w^ere pronounced. Unlike mere medals, of importance 
to certain private parties only, they have the currency 
of the gold coin of the republic, with the legend and 
superscription of sovereignty, wherever they go, even 
in foreign lands. 

Many years before his death, his judgments in mat- 
ters of Admiralty and Prize had arrested the attention 
of that illustrious judge and jurist. Lord Stowell ; and 
Sir James Mackintosh, a name emblazoned by literature 
and jurisprudence, had said of them, that they were 
** justly admired by all cultivators of the Law of Na- 
tions."^ His words have often been cited as authori- 
ty in Westminster Hall, a tribute of unwonted char- 
acter to a foreign jurist ;t and the Chief Justice of Eng- 
land has made the remarkable declaration, with regard 
to a point on which Story had differed from the Queen's 
Bench, that his opinion would, " at least, neutralize 



* Letter of Sir James Mackintosh to the Honorable Edward Everett, 
dated June 3, 1824. 

f This might be illustrated by many references to the English Reports. 
The following extract is from a letter of William Bnrge, Esq., Q. C, 
author of the learned and elaborate Commentaries on Colonial and Foreign 
Law, addressed to Professor Greenleaf, dated April 1, 1843. "The 
name of Story has shed so much lustre on the jurisprudence of his own 
country and that of Europe, that I can never adequately express my 
share of the obligations he has conferred on both. Our judges cite him 
with language denoting their high respect for his talents and learning. 
I have found in all his writings more to satisfy minute inquiries and im- 
part the fullest information than I can ever meet with anywhere else. 
May that great and good man be long spared to us ! " 



32 



the effect of the English decision, and induce any of 
their courts to consider the question as an open one." * 
In debate, in the House of Lords, Lord Campbell 
characterized him as " greater than any law-writer of 
which England could boast, or which she could bring 
forward, since the days of Blackstone " ; f and, in a 
letter to our departed brother, the same distinguished 
magistrate said, — *' I survey, with increased aston- 
ishment, your extensive, minute, exact, and familiar 
knowledge of English legal writers in every depart- 
ment of the law. A similar testimony to your juridical 
learning, I make no doubt, would be offered by the 
lawyers of France and Germany, as well as of Amer- 
ica, and we should all concur in placing you at the 
head of the jurists of the present age." J His author- 
ity was acknowledged in France and in Germany, the 
classic lands of jurisprudence ; ^ nor is it too much 

* Letter of Lord Denman to Charles Sumner, dated September 29, 
1840. The case to which Lord Denman referred was that of Peters v. 
The Warren Insurance Company, 3 Sumner's Rep. 389, where Mr. 
Justice Story dissented from the case of Devaux v. Salvador, 4 Adolph. 
& Ellis, 420. 

f Speech on Lord Brougham's motion of thanks to Lord Ashburton, 
April 7, 1843. 

I Letter of Lord Campbell to Mr. Justice Story, dated September 29, 
1842. 

§ His works were reviewed, with high praise, in the Eevue Etrangere 
of Foelix, at Paris, and in the Kritische Zeitschrift fur Rechlsioissenschafi 
und Gesetzgehung of Mittermaier, at Heidelberg. Some of them were 
translated into French and German ; and that eminent jurist, Savigny, 
at Berlin, said of him, in a letter to Theodore S. Fay, Esq., dated 
November 28, 1841, — " Depuis longtemps je connais et estime votre 
savant compatriote comme un homme qui fait le plus grand honneur a 
sa double patrie,je veux dire ^ PAmirique et ii la jurisprudence.^^ 



33 



to say, that, at the moment of his death, he enjoyed a 
renown such as had never before been achieved, during 
life, by any jmist of the common law. 

In mentioning these things, I merely state facts, 
without intending presumptuously to assert for our 
brother any precedence in the scale of eminent jurists. 
The extent of his fame is a fact. But it will not be 
forgotten that the cultivators of the common law have 
been hitherto confined to a narrow and insular repu- 
tation. Even its great master has received no higher 
designation on the Continent than quidam Cocus, a 
certain Coke. 

In the common law was the spirit of freedom ; 
in that of the Continent the spirit of science. The 
common law has given to the world the trial by 
jury, the writ of habeas corpus, the system of parlia- 
mentary representation, the rules and orders of debate, 
and that benign principle which pronounces that its 
air is too pure for a slave to breathe, — perhaps the 
five most important political establishments of modern 
times. From the Continent has been derived the 
important impulse to the systematic study, arrange- 
ment, and development of the law, — the example of 
Law Schools and of Codes. 

Story was bred in the common law ; but while ad- 
miring its vital principles of freedom, he felt how much 
it would gain, if illumined by the torch of science, 
and the light of other systems of jurisprudence. Much 
of the later labors of his life was specially devoted to 
this object ; and under his hands, we behold the be- 
ginning of a new study, the science of Comparative 

5 



s^ 



Jurisprudence, kindred to those other departments of 
knowledge which are at once the token and the har- 
binger of the peaceful association of nations. 

I need not add that he emulated the Law Schools 
of the Continent ; " as ever witness for him " this seat 
of learning.* 

On more than one occasion, he urged, with conclu- 
sive force, the importance, in our age, of reducing our 
unwritten law to the certainty of a Code, compiling 
and bringing into one body those fragments which are 
now scattered, like the dissevered limbs of Osiris, in all 
directions, through the pages of many thousand vol- 
umes.t His views on this high subject, while they 
were widely different from those of John Locke and 
Jeremy Bentham, — both of whom seem to have sup- 
posed themselves able to clothe a people in a new 
code as in fresh garments, — would, probably, be found 
to be in harmony with those now generally adopted by 
the jurists of the continent of Europe, and not unlike 
those expressed in an earlier age by Bacon and Leib- 
nitz, the two greatest intellects that have ever been 
applied to topics of jurisprudence. J 

* It is said, that Wolsey, to whom Ipswich and Oxford, " those twins 
of learning," one of which fell with hina, were so much indebted, wished 
also to establish a Law School ; but this has not yet been done in Eng- 
land. — Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, Vol. I., p. 500. 

f Encyclopaedia Americana, article Laiv, Legislation, Codes, Appen- 
dix to Vol. VIL, pp. 586-592; Report of the Commissioners of Mas- 
sachusetts on the Codification of the Common Law ; American Jurist, 
Vol. XVIL,p. 17. 

f See Bacon's Offer to King James of a Digest of the Laws of Eng- 
land; Leibnitz, Opera, Epist. XV. ad Kestnerum, Tom. IV., Pars 4, p. 
269; Ratio Corporis Juris reconcinnandi, Tom. IV., Pars 3, p. 235. 



35 



In this catholic spirit he showed the attribute of a 
superior mind. He loved the law with a lover's fond- 
ness, but not with a lover's blindness. He could not 
join with those devotees of the common law by whom 
it has been entitled " the perfection of reason," an 
anachronism as great as the assumed infallibility of the 
Pope ; as if perfection or infallibility were to be found 
in this life. He was naturally led, in a becoming 
temper, to contemplate its amendment ; and here is 
revealed the character of the Jurist, not content with 
the present, but thoughtful of the future. In a letter 
from him, which has been pubUshed since his death,* 
he refers, with sorrow, to '' what is but too common 
in our profession, a disposition to resist innovation, 
even when it is an improvement." It is only an ele- 
vated mind, that, having mastered the subtilties of the 
law, is willing to reform them. 

And now, farewell to thee. Jurist, Master, Bene- 
factor, Friend ! May thy spirit continue to inspire 
a love for the science of the law ! May thy example 
be ever fresh in the minds of the young, beaming, as 
in life, with encouragement, kindness, and hope ! 

From the grave of the Jurist, at Mount Auburn, let 
us walk to that of the Artist, who sleeps beneath 
the protecting arms of those trees which cast their 
shadow into this church. Washington Allston died 
in the month of July, 1843, aged sixty-three, having 
reached the grand climacteric, that special mile-stone 

* Addressed to the Principal of the Dublin Law Institution, dated May 
15, 1844. 



3a 



on the road of life. It was Saturday night ; the 
cares of the week were over; the pencil and brush 
were laid in repose ; the great canvass on which for 
many years he had sought to perpetuate the image 
of Daniel confronting the idolatrous soothsayers of 
Belshazzar, was left, with the chalk lines designating 
the labors to be resumed after the rest of the Sab- 
bath ; the evening was passed in the pleasant con- 
verse of family and friends; words of benediction 
had fallen from his lips upon a beloved relative ; all 
had retired for the night, leaving him alone, in health, 
to receive serenely the visitation of Death, sudden but 
not unprepared for. Happy lot ! thus to be borne 
away, with blessings on the lips, not through the 
long valley of disease, amidst the sharpness of pain, 
and the darkness that beclouds the slowly departing 
spirit, but straight upward through realms of light, 
swiftly, yet gently, as on the wings of a dove ! 

The early shades of evening had be^un to prevail, 
before the body of the Artist reached its last resting- 
place ; and the solemn service of the church was read 
in the open air, by the flickering flame of a torch, fit 
image of life. In the group of mourners, who bore by 
their presence a last tribute to what was mortal in 
him of whom so much was immortal, stood the great 
Jurist. His soul, overflowing with tenderness and 
appreciation of merit of all kinds, was touched by the 
scene. In vivid words, as he slowly left the church- 
yard, he poured forth his admiration and his grief. 
Never was such an Artist mourned by such a Jurist. 

Of AUston may we repeat the words in which 



37 



Burke has commemorated his friend Sir Joshua Rey- 
nolds, when he sajs, — " He was the first who added 
the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his 
country." * An ingenious English writer, who sees Art 
at once with the eye of taste and humanity, has said, 
in a recent publication on our Artist : — "It seemed to 
me, that in him America had lost her third great man. 
What Washington was as a statesman, Channing as a 
moralist, that was Allston as an Artist." f 

And here again we discern the inseparable link be- 
tween character and works. Allston was a good man, 
with a soul refined by purity, exalted by religion, soft- 
ened by love. In manner, he was simple, yet courtly, 
— quiet, though anxious to please, — kindly alike to 
all, the poor and lowly, not less than to the rich and 
great, — a modest, unpretending, Christian gentle- 
man. As he spoke, in that voice of softest utterance, 
all were charmed to listen, and the airy-footed hours 
often tripped on far tow^ards the gates of morning, 
before his friends could break from his spell. His 
character is transfigured in his works; and the Artist 
is always inspired by the man. 

His life was consecrated to Art. He lived to dif- 
fuse Beauty, as a writer, as a poet, as a painter. As 
an expounder of the principles of his art, he will take 
a place with Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Durer, Joshua 
Reynolds, and Fuseli. His theory of painting, as de- 
veloped in his still unpublished discourses, and in that 
tale of rare beauty, " Monaldi," is an instructive 

* Prior's Life of Burke, Vol. IL, pp. 189, 190. 
j- Mrs. Jameson's Memoirs and Essays. 



38 



memorial of his conscientious studies. In the small 
group of painter-poets — poets by the double title of 
the pencil and the pen — he holds an honored place. 
He was pronounced, by no less a judge than Southej, 
to be one of the first poets of the age. His ode on 
England and America, one of the choicest lyrics in 
the language, is immeasurably superior to the satiri- 
cal verse of Salvator Rosa, and may claim compan- 
ionship with the remarkable sonnets of Michel An- 
gelo. 

In his youth, while yet a pupil of the University, his 
busy fingers found pleasure in drawing, and there 
is still preserved, in the records of one of our soci- 
eties, a pen-and-ink sketch from his hand. Shortly 
after leaving Cambridge, he repaired to Europe, in the 
pursuit of his art. At Paris were then collected the 
great masterpieces of painting and sculpture, the 
spoils of unholy war, robbed from their native galle- 
ries and churches, to swell the pomp of the imperial 
capital. There our Artist devoted his days to the 
diligent study of his chosen profession, particularly 
the department of drawing, so important to accurate 
art. Alluding to these thorough labors at a later day, 
he said, " he worked like a mechanic." Perhaps 
to these may be referred his singular excellence in 
that necessary, but neglected branch, which is to Art 
what Grammar is to language. Grammar and Design 
are treated by Aristotle as on a level.* 

Turning his back upon Paris, and the greatness of 

* Politics, V. 3. 



39 



the Empire, he directed his steps to Italy, the en- 
chanted ground of literature, of history, and of art, — 
strown with richest memorials of the Past, — touching 
from scenes memorable in the story of the progress of 
man, — teaching by the pages of philosophers and his- 
torians, — vocal with the melody of poets, — ringing 
with the music which St. Cecilia protects, — glowing 
with the living marble and canvass, — beneath a sky 
of heavenly purity and brightness, — w^ith the sunsets 
which Claude has painted, — parted by the Apennines, 
early witnesses of the unrecorded Etruscan civiliza- 
tion, — surrounded by the snow-capped Alps and the 
blue, classic waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The 
deluge of war, which submerged Europe, had here 
subsided ; and our Artist took up his peaceful abode 
in Rome, the modern home of Art. Strange change 
of condition ! Rome, sole surviving city of An- 
tiquity, who once disdained all that could be wrought 
by the cunning hand of sculpture, — 

" Excudent alii^spirantia mollius aera, 
Credo equidem : vivos ducent de marmore vultus,"* — 

who has commanded the world by her arms, by her 
jurisprudence, by her church, now sways it further 
by her arts. Pilgrims from afar, where neither her 
eagles, her praetors, nor her interdicts ever reached, 
become the willing subjects of this new empire ; and 
the Vatican, stored with the precious remains of An- 
tiquity, and the touching creations of a Christian 
pencil, has succeeded to the Vatican whose thunders 
intermingled with the strifes of modern Europe. 

* iEneis, VI., 847. 



4- 



40 



At Rome he was happy in the friendship of Cole- 
ridge, and in long walks in his instructive company. 
We can well imagine that the author of Genevieve 
and The Ancient Mariner would find especial sympa- 
thies with Allston. We behold these two natures, 
tremblingly alive to beauty of all kinds, looking to- 
gether upon those majestic ruins, upon the manifold 
accumulations of Art, upon the marble, which almost 
spoke, and upon the warmer canvass, — listening to- 
gether to the flow of the perpetual fountains, fed by 
ancient aqueducts, — musing together in the Forum on 
the mighty footprints of History, — and entering to- 
gether, with sympathetic awe, that grand Christian 
church whose dome rises a majestic symbol of the 
comprehensive Christianity which shall embrace the 
whole earth. "Never judge of a work of art by its 
defects," was one of the lessons of Coleridge to his 
companion, which, when extended, by natural ex- 
pansion, to the other things of life, is a sentiment 
of justice and charity, of higher value than a statue 
of Praxiteles, or a picture of Raffael. 

In England, where our Artist passed several years 
at a later period, his intercourse with Coleridge was 
renewed, and he became the friend and companion of 
Lamb and Wordsworth also. Afterwards, on his re- 
turn to his own country, he spoke with fondness of 
these men, and dwelt with delight upon their genius 
and virtues. 

In considering more particularly his character as an 
Artist, we should regard his attainments in three dif- 
ferent respects, — drawing, color, and expression, or 



41 



sentiment. It has already been seen that he had de- 
voted himself with uncommon zeal to drawing. His 
works bear witness to this excellence. There are 
chalk outlines, sketched on canvass by him, which 
are as clear and definite as any thing from the classic 
touch of Flaxman. 

'His excellence in color was remarkable. This 
seeming mystery, which is a distinguishing charac- 
teristic of the artists of different schools, periods, and 
countries, is not unlike that of language or style in 
literature. Color is to the painter what words are to 
the author ; and as the writers of one age or place 
arrive at a peculiar mastery in the use of language, 
so the artists of a particular period excel in color. 
It would be difficult to account satisfactorily for the 
rich idiom suddenly assumed by our English tongue 
in the contemporaneous prose of Bacon, Hooker, and 
Jeremy Taylor, and in the unapproached variety of 
Shakspeare. It might be as difficult to account for 
the unequalled tints which shone on the canvass of 
Tintoretto, Paul Veronese, and Titian, masters of 
what is called the Venetian School. The ignorance 
of some inquirers has referred these glories to con- 
cealed or lost artistic rules in the combination of 
colors ; not thinking that it can be traced only to a 
peculiar native talent for color, as there is a native 
talent for language, which was prompted to its display 
by circumstances difficult at this late period fully to 
determine. As it happens that some persons possess 
a peculiar and unbought fehcity and copiousness of 
words, without an accurate knowledge of grammar, 



42 



so there are artists excelling in rich and splendid 
colors, but ignorant of drawing ; while, on the other 
hand, accurate drawing is sometimes coldly clad by 
weak or imperfect colors. 

Allston was largely endowed by nature with the 
talent for color, which was strongly developed under 
the influence of Italian art. While in Rome, he was 
remarked for his excellence in this respect, and re- 
ceived from the German painters who were there the 
high title of the American Titian.* Critics of authority 
have said that the clearness and vigor of his coloring 
approached that of the elder masters.f It was rich 
and harmonious as the verses of the Fairy Queen, 
and was uniformly soft, mellow, and appropriate, with- 
out the garish brilliancy of the modern French school, 
which in its disturbing influence calls to mind the 
saying of the blind man, that red resembled the notes 
of a trumpet. 

He aflected no secret or mystery in the preparation 
of colors. What he knew he was ready to impart 
to others ; his genius he could not impart. With the 
simple pigments, accessible alike to all, he reproduced, 
with glowing brush, the tints of nature. All that his 
eyes looked upon furnished a lesson ; the flowers of 
the field, the foliage of the forest, the sunset glories 
of our western horizon, the transparent azure above 
us, the blackness of the storm, the soft gray of twi- 

* Dunlap's History of the Arts of Design, Vol. 11. , p. 167; Mrs. 
Jameson's Memoirs and Sketches. 

f Bunsen, Beschreibung- der Stadt Rom., Vol. I., p. 538. Article 
on Modern Art, by K. Platner. 



43 



light, the haze of an Indian summer, the human 
countenance animate with thought and emotion, — and 
that finest color in nature, according to the ancient 
Greek, the blush of an ingenuous youth. These 
were the sources from which he drew. With a dis- 
cerning spirit he mixed them on his pallet, and with 
the eye of sympathy saw them again on his can- 
vass. 

But richness of coloring, superadded to accuracy of 
drawing, cannot secure the highest place in Art. The 
expression, the sentiment, the thought, the soul, which 
sits on the canvass, is not less important than that 
which animates the printed page or beams from the 
human countenance. The mere imitation of inani- 
mate nature belongs to the humbler schools of art. 
The skill of Zeuxis, which drew the birds to peck at 
the grapes on his canvass, and the triumph of Par- 
rhasius, who deceived his rival by a painted curtain, 
cannot compare with those pictures which seem 
articulate with all the various voices of humanity. 
The highest form of art is that which represents man 
in the highest scenes and under the influence of the 
highest sentiments. And that quality, or character- 
istic, which has been sometimes called expression, is 
the highest element of art. It is this which gives to 
RafFael, who yields to Titian in color, such an emi- 
nence among artists. His soul was brimming with 
sympathies, which his cunning hand has kept alive in 
immortal pictures. Here the eye, the mouth, the coun- 
tenance, the whole composition, has life, — not the 
life of mere imitation, copied from common nature, 



44 



but elevated, softened, purified, idealized. As we 
behold his works, we forget the colors in which they 
are robed ; we gaze, as at living forms ; and seem to 
look behind the painted screen of flesh into living 
souls. A genius, so largely endowed with the Pro- 
methean fire, has not unaptly been called Divine. 

It was said by Plato, that nothing is beautiful, 
which is not morally good. But this is not a faultless 
proposition. Beauty is of all kinds and degrees, as it 
is everywhere, beneath the celestial canopy, in us 
and about us. It is that completeness or finish of any 
thing, which gives pleasure to the mind. It is to be 
found in the color of a flower and in the accuracy 
of geometry, in an act of self-sacrifice and in the 
rhythm of a poem, in the virtues of humanity and 
in the marvels of the visible w^orld, in the meditations 
of a solitary soul and in the stupendous mechanism 
of civil society. There is beauty where there is nei- 
ther life nor morality ; but the highest form of beauty 
is in the perfection of our moral nature. 

The highest beauty of expression is a grace of 
Christian art. It flows from the sensibilities, affec- 
tion s, and struggles which are peculiar to the Christian 
character. It breathes purity, gentleness, meekness, 
patience, tenderness, peace. It abhors pride, vain- 
glory, selfishness, intemperance, lust, war. How ce- 
lestial is this, compared with the grace which dwells 
in the perfection of form and color only ! The beauty 
of ancient art found its highest expression in the fault- 
less form of Aphrodite rising from the sea,* and in the 

* Ovid, Tristia, Lib. H., 527. 



45 



majestic mien of Juno, with snow-white arms, and 
rojal robes, seated on a throne of gold ; * not in the 
soul-lit countenance of her who watched the infant in 
his manger-cradle, and throbbed with a mother's ecsta- 
sies beneath the agonies of the cross. 

Allston was a Christian artist, and the beauty of 
expression lends an uncommon charm to his colors. 
All that he did shows sensibility, refinement, delicacy, 
feeling, rather than force. His genius was almost 
feminine. As he advanced in life, this was more re- 
marked. His pictures became more and more instinct 
with those higher sentiments which form the truest 
glory of Art. 

Early in life, he had a fondness for pieces repre- 
senting banditti ; but this taste does not appear in his 
later works. On more than one occasion, he expressed 
a disinclination to paint battle-pieces. In so doing, his 
artistic taste, which did not separate morality from art, 
unconsciously judged the morality of the picture. Lu- 
cretius has said, in often quoted lines, that it is pleas- 
ant, when removed beyond the reach of danger, to 
behold the shock of contending armies : — 

" Per campos instructa, tua sine parte pericli, 
Suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri." f 

But this is a heathen sentiment, which Christianity 

* Martial, Lib. X., Epig. 89. 

f Lib. IL 5. The Greek epigrammatist, describing the Philoctetes of 
Parrhasius, an image of hopeless wretchedness and consuming grief, 
rises to a higher sentiment, when he says, — 

" We blame thee, painter, though thy art commend : 
'T was time his sufferings with himself should end." 

Anthol., Lib. IV. 



and humanity disown. The artist of purest aims feeis 
that no scene of human strife can find a place in the 
highest art ; that man, created in the image of God, 
should never be pictured degrading, profaning, vio- 
lating that sacred image. 

Were this sentiment general in art and literature, 
w^ar would be shorn of its false glory. Let our poets, 
our historians, our orators, join with the Artist, in say- 
ing, JVb battle-piece. Let them cease to dwell, except 
with pain and reprobation, upon those dismal exhibi- 
tions of human passion, in which the lives of friends 
are devoted, to procure the death of enemies. Let no 
Christian pen, let no Christian tongue, dignify, by 
praise or picture, scenes from which God averts his 
eye. It is true, man has slain his fellow-man ; armies 
have rushed in deadly shock against armies ; the blood 
of brothers has been spilled. These are facts which 
history must enter sorrowfully, tearfully, in her faithful 
record ; but let her not perpetuate the passions from 
which they sprung, by investing them with her attrac- 
tions. Let her dwell, with eulogy and pride, on those 
acts which are noble, true, Christ-like in their charac- 
ter. Let these be preserved by the votive canvass and 
marble. But no battle-pieces ! 

In the progress of moral truth, the animal passions, 
which degrade our nature, are, by degrees, checked 
and subdued. The license of lust, and the brutality 
of intemperance, which mark the periods of a civiliza- 
tion inferior to our own, are now driven from public 
displays. Art faithfully reflects the character of the 
age, and libertinism and intemperance now no longer 



47 



intrude their obscene faces in any of its pictures. The 
time is at hand when rehgion, humanity, and taste 
will all concur in likewise rejecting any representation 
of human strife. Lais and Phryne have fled; Bac- 
chus and Silenus have been driven reeling from the 
scene. Mars will soon follow, howling, as with the 
wound which he received from the Grecian spear, in 
the field before Troy. 

In the grand mission of teaching to nations and to 
individuals wherein is true greatness, Art has a noble 
office to perform. If she be not a herald, she is at 
least a handmaid, of Truth. Her lessons may not train 
the intellect, but they cannot fail to touch the heart. 
Who can measure the blessed influence of an image of 
beauty, aflection, and truth? The Christus Conso- 
lator of SchefFer, voiceless and without a word, wins 
the soul to the Christian graces, and makes it overflow 
with gratitude to the artist. It is only works which, 
like this, are animated by the godlike part of our na- 
ture, that can hope for a wide immortality. The 
flowers which spring from the bad passions of man 
must fade and be forgotten, even as the perishing 
flowers of this earth ; while those which are inspired 
by the heavenly sentiments shall live in perennial, 
amaranthine bloom. The Hall of Battles, at Ver- 
sailles, in which Louis Philippe, the great conser- 
vator of peace, has arrayed, on acres of canvass, the 
bloody contests which disfigure the long history of 
France, will be shut, with mortification and shame, 
by a generation that shall appreciate the true glory 
of the kingdom. 



48 



Allston loved excellence for its own sake. He 
looked down upon the common strife for worldly con- 
sideration. With rare beauty of truth and expression, 
he said, that " Fame is the eternal shadow of excel- 
lence, from which it can never be separated." Here 
is revealed a volume, prompting to high thought and 
action, not for the sake of glory, but to advance our- 
selves in knowledge, in virtue, in excellence of all 
kinds. Our Artist has here given a fresh utterance to 
that sentiment which is the highest grace in the life of 
that great magistrate, Lord Mansfield, when, confes- 
sing the attractions of popularity, he said, it was that 
which followed, not which was followed after. 

As we contemplate the life and works of Allston, 
we are inexpressibly grateful that he lived. His ex- 
ample is one of our most precious possessions. And 
yet, while we rejoice that he has done much, we 
seem to hear a whisper that he might have done 
more. His productions suggest a higher genius than 
they fully display ; and we are sometimes disposed to 
praise the master rather than his works. Like a be- 
loved character in English literature, Sir James Mack- 
intosh, he suddenly closed a career of beautiful but 
fragmentary labors, leaving much undone which all 
had hoped he would do. The great painting which 
had haunted so many years of his life, and which his 
friends and country awaited with anxious interest, 
remained unfinished at last. His Virgilian sensibili- 
ty and modesty would doubtless have ordered its de- 
struction, had death arrested him less suddenly.* 

• The accomplished artist, Mr. West, now in Boston, has kindly fur- 



49 



Titian died, leaving, like Allston, an important picture, 
on which his hand had been busy down to the time 
of his death, still incomplete. A pious and dis- 
tinguished pupil, the younger Palma, took up the la- 

nished me with the following sketch of his impressions of this picture : — 
*' For many years, I had heard of the picture, in progress, of Bel- 
shazzar's Feast, by Washington Allston. Upon his death, I was informed 
of the defaced condition in which he had left it, and, finally, of its resto- 
ration to its present state ; and among the many descriptions given me of 
it, as it is, there were none very flattering to his reputation. My surprise 
and pleasure were the greater, upon seeing it, — as it is, certainly, as far 
as it is wrought, one of the finest pictures I ever saw, I have looked at 
it again and again, and feel confident I am not mistaken in rating it as I 
do. There is much more of the picture finished than strikes one at first 
view ; the few unfinished figures in the foreground A^eiling, as it were, the 
excellence, beauty, and amount of that which is completed. The whole 
of the background and middle ground, or the figures next in size and ad- 
junct to the principal figures, appear to be finished, and that with a care 
and completeness that are surprising. His concern was everywhere upon 
the picture, and the detail which pervades the whole surface of the can- 
vass makes every inch of it teem with the subject; and this too, strange 
to say, without the least detriment to that required breadth that no fine 
picture must want. ' In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's 
hand and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the 
wall of the king's palace,' &c. This is the time chosen for the picture. 
Of the figures in the foreground, the queen is the only one that is fin- 
ished, or very nearly so. Her attitude, her intently fixed look of awe and 
grief at the writing on the wall, her convulsive gripe of the hand of an 
attendant immediately behind her, while she hears the prophet's doom, 
the expression in the faces of the two attendants, is one of the finest and 
most powerful passages of art I ever saw committed to canvass. It ex- 
hibits the drawing of Raffael with the coloring of Titian. On the right 
hand of the picture, as you stand before it, below the unfinished astrolo- 
gers in the foreground, is a group of figures, mostly in shadow, some 
bending low in reverence of the prophet, — which for color, drawing, and 
execution, altogether, is of unsurpassable beauty. The artist aimed to 
make it a perfect picture ; and, if we may judge by the evidence already 
adduced, the trial would have terminated very much like a verdict in his 
favor." 

7 



50 



bor of his master, and, on completing it, placed it in 
the church for which it was destined, with this in- 
scription : — " That which Titian left unfinished Pal- 
ma reverently completed, and dedicated the work to 
God." Where is the Palma who can complete what 
our Titian has left unfinished ? 

Let us now reverently approach the grave of the 
brother whom, in order of time, we were called to 
mourn first. William Ellery Channing, the Phi- 
lanthropist, died in the month of October, 1842, 
aged sixty-two. It is by an easy transition that we 
pass from Allston to Channing. They were friends and 
connections. The monumental stone which marks the 
last resting-place of the Philanthropist was designed 
by the Artist. In physical organization they were not 
unlike, each possessing a fineness of fibre which hard- 
ly belongs to the Anglo-Saxon stock. There were in 
both the same sensibility, delicacy, refinement, and 
truth, illumined by highest aims ; and the coloring of 
Allston finds a parallel in the Venetian richness of 
the style of Channing. 

I do not speak of him as the Divine, although his 
labors might well have earned that title also. It is 
probable that no single mind in our age has exerted a 
greater influence over theological opinions. But I pass 
these by, without presuming to indicate their charac- 
ter. It were far better, on this occasion, to dwell on 
those Christian labors which should not fail to find 
favor alike in all churches, whether at Rome, Geneva, 
Canterbury, or Boston. 



51 



His beneficent influence has been widely felt and 
acknowledged. His words have been heard and read 
by thousands, in all conditions of life, and in various 
lands, whose hearts have been touched with gratitude 
towards the meek and eloquent upholder of divine 
truth. An American traveller, at a small village on 
one of the terraces of the Alps, in the Austrian Tyrol, 
encountered a German, who, hearing that his com- 
panion was from Boston, inquired earnestly after 
Channing, — saying, that the difficulty of learning the 
English language had been adequately repaid by the 
delight of his writings. A distinguished stranger, 
when about to visit this country, was told by a relative 
not less lovely in character than exalted in condition, 
that she envied him his journey, " for two objects that 
he would not fail to see, — Niagara and Channing." 
We have already observed, that a critic of art has 
placed him in a grand American triumvirate with 
Allston and Washington.* More frequently, he has 
been associated with Washington and Franklin ; but, 
unlike Washington, he had no ensigns of command ; 
unlike Franklin, he was never elevated to the pin- 
nacle of foreign office. It is probable that since them 
no American has exerted an equal influence over his 
fellow-men. And yet, if it be asked what single 
important measure he has carried to a successful 
close, I could not answer. It is on character that 
he has wrought and is still producing incalculable 
changes. 

* Mrs. Jameson's Memoirs and Sketches. 



52 



From the retirement of his study he has spoken to 
the nations and to mankind, in a voice which has made 
itself heard in the most distant places, and whose in- 
fluence, pleading the cause of gendeness, of right- 
eousness, and of peace, is felt by thousands on 
whose souls has never fallen either his spoken or 
written word. He is the herald of a new and greater 
age than any yet seen in the world's history, when 
the Sword shall yield to the Pen, when the Gorgon 
countenance of Force, hardening all that it looks 
upon, shall be dazzled into imbecility by the efful- 
gence of Christian Truth. While he lived, he was 
ever, through good report and evil report, the cham- 
pion of Humanity. " Follow my white plume," said 
the chivalrous monarch of France, as he plunged 
into the thickest of the vulg-ar fight. '' Follow the 
Right," more resplendent than plume or oriflamme, 
was the watchword of Channing. 

I have called him the Philanthropist, the lover of 
man, — the title of highest honor on earth. " I take 
goodness in this sense," says Lord Bacon, " the offecU 
ing of the weal of men, which is what the Grecians 

call Philanthropeia This of all virtues and 

dignities of the mind is the greatest, being the char- 
acter of the Deity ; and without it man is a busy, 
mischievous, wretched thing, no better than a kind 
of vermin." * Lord Bacon was right. Confessing 
the attractions of Scholarship, awed by the majesty 
of the Law, fascinated by the beauty of Art, our souls 
bend with involuntary reverence before the angelic 

* Essays, Of Goodness. 



53 



nature that seeks the good of his fellow-man. It is 
through him that God speaks. On him has de- 
scended in especial measure his divine spirit. God is 
love, and man most nearly resembles him in his 
diffusive benevolence. In heaven, we are told, the 
first place or degree is given to the angels of love, 
who are termed Seraphim ; the second to the angels 
of light, who are termed Cherubim. 

It must be confessed with sorrow, that the time 
has not yet come, when even his exalted labors of 
benevolence can find equal acceptance with all men. 
And now, as I undertake to speak of them in this 
presence, I seem to tread on half-buried cinders. I 
shall tread fearlessly ; trusting to be loyal to the 
occasion, to my subject, and to myself. In the 
language of my own profession, I shall not travel 
out of the record; but I trust to be true to 
the record. It is fit that his name should be affec- 
tionately commemorated here. He was one of us. 
He was a son of the University, and for many 
years connected with its government as a teacher, 
and as a Fellow of the Corporation. To him, more, 
perhaps, than to any other person, is she indebted 
for her most distinctive opinions. His name is indis- 
solubly connected with hers ; — 

" And when thy ruins shall disclaim 
To be the treasure of his name, 
His name, that cannot fade, shall be 
An everlasting monument to thee."* 

* Ben Jonson's inscription for the " pious marble " in honor of Dray 
ton. 



54 



I have called him the Philanthropist ; he might also 
be called the Moralist, for he was the high ex- 
pounder of human duties ; but his exposition of duties 
was no common service in the cause of humanity. 
His morality, etherealized and sublimed by Christian 
love, fortified and confirmed by Christian righteous- 
ness, was applied with unhesitating frankness to the 
people and affairs of his own country and age. He 
saw full well, that it were vain to declare, in general 
terms, the blessings of right and the misery of 
wrong, unless the special wrong was pointed out 
which ought to be eradicated. A general morality 
is apt to be inefficient. Tamerlane and Napoleon 
might both join in general praise of peace and con- 
demnation of war, and entitle themselves to be en- 
rolled, with Alexander of Russia, as the members of 
a Peace Society. And many people satisfy their 
consciences by the utterance of general truth, warm- 
ed, perhaps, by rhetorical effort, without venturing 
or caring to apply it practically in life. This was 
not the case with our Philanthropist. He sought to 
bring his morality to bear distinctly and pointedly 
upon the world. Nor was he disturbed by another 
suggestion, which the moralist often encounters, that 
his views were sound in theory, but not practical. 
He well knew that what is unsound in theory must 
be vicious in practice. He did not hesitate, there- 
fore, to fasten upon any wrong he discerned, and 
attach to it a mark, which, like that of Cain, can 
never be wiped from its forehead. His Philanthropy 
was Morality in action. 



55 



As a Moralist, he knew that the highest happiness 
could be reached only by following the right ; and as 
a lover of man, he sought on all occasions to inculcate 
this as a supreme duty. He strove to impress upon 
states and nations the important truth, that they were 
amenable to the same moral law as individuals. 
This proposition, if universally recognized, would 
open the gates of a new civilization. It is the 
vague and imperfect acceptance of it that is the 
source of national sins. The principles of morality, 
after they have possessed themselves of the indi- 
vidual, slowly pervade the body politic; and it is not 
uncommon to listen to the suggestion, that the state 
and the individual are governed by separate laws of 
right, — that the state may do what an individual 
may not do. In combating this pernicious fallacy, 
Channing did important service to the state. He has 
helped to bring government within the circle of Chris- 
tian duties, and has instructed the statesman that 
there is one unbending rule of Right, binding alike on 
public and private conscience. This truth cannot 
be too often proclaimed. The pulpit, the press, the 
school, the college, should render it familiar to our 
ears, and pour it into our souls. Beneficent nature 
joins with the moralist in declaring the universality 
of God's laws ; the flowers of the field, the rays of 
the sun, the morning and evening dews, the descend- 
ing showers, the waves of the sea, the breezes that 
fan our cheeks and bear rich argosies from shore to 
shore, the careering storm, all that is on this earth, — 
nay, more, the system of which this earth is a part, 



56 



and the infinitude of the Universe, in which our sys- 
tem dwindles to a grain of sand, all declare one 
prevailing law, knowing no distinction of persons, of 
numbers, of masses, of size. 

While Channing commended this truth, he recog- 
nized with especial fervor the rights of men. He 
saw in our institutions, as established in 1776, the 
grand animating idea of Human Rights, distinguish- 
ing us from other countries. It was this idea, which, 
first appearing at our nativity as a nation, shone on 
the path of our fathers, as the unaccustomed star in 
the west, which twinkled over Bethlehem. 

Kindred to the idea of Human Rights was that 
other, which appears so often in his writings as to 
seem to inspire his whole philanthropy, the impor- 
tance of the Individual Man. No human soul was 
so abject in condition as not to find sympathy and 
reverence from him. He confessed his brother- 
hood with all God's children, although separated 
from them by rivers, mountains, and seas ; although 
a torrid sun had left upon them an unchangeable 
Ethiopian skin. Filled by this thought, he sought 
in all that he did to promote their elevation and hap- 
piness. He longed to do good, to be a spring of life 
and light to his fellow-beings. " I see nothing worth 
living for," he said, " but the divine virtue which en- 
dures and surrenders all things for truth, duty, and 
mankind." * 

In the cause of education and of temperance 

* Channing's Works, Vol. II., p. 175. 



57 



he was an earnest laborer. He saw how essen- 
tial was knowledge to a people who governed them- 
selves, — that without it the right of voting would 
be a dangerous privilege, and that with it the state 
would be elevated, and the means of happiness in- 
finitely diffused. His vivid imagination saw the blight 
of intemperance, and exposed it in glowing colors. 
In these causes he was sustained by the kindly sym- 
pathy of those among whom he lived. 

But there were two other causes in which his soul 
more than in any other was engaged, particularly at 
the close of his life, and with which his name will be 
indissolubly connected ; — I mean the efforts for the 
abolition of those two mighty Heathen Institutions, 
Slavery and War. Fain would I pass these by, on 
this occasion ; but not to speak of them would be to 
present a portrait from which the most distinctive 
features had been carefully removed. 

And, first, as to Slavery. His attention was par- 
ticularly drawn to this by his residence early in life 
in Virginia, and at a later day for a season in one of 
the West India islands. His soul was moved by its 
injustice and inhumanity. He saw in it an infraction 
of God's great law of Right and of Love, and of 
the Christian precept, " Whatsoever ye would that 
men should do to you, do ye even so to them." He 
regarded it as contrary to the law of nature ; and 
here the Philanthropist unconsciously adopted the con- 
clusions of the Supreme Court of the United States, 
speaking by the mouth of Mr. Chief Justice Mar- 
shall,* and of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, 

* The Antelope, 10 Wheaton's Rep. 211. 
8 



58 



at a later day, speaking by the mouth of Mr. Chief 
Justice Shaw.* 

With these convictions, his duty as a Moralist and 
a Philanthropist did not admit of question. He saw 
before him a giant wrong. Almost alone he went 
forth to the contest. On his return from the West 
Indies, he first declared his views from the pulpit. At 
a later day, he published a book entitled Slavery., the 
most extensive treatise on any subject from his pen. 
Other publications followed, down to the close of his 
life, among which was a prophetic letter, addressed 
to Henry Clay, against the annexation of Texas, on 
the ground that it would entail upon the country war 
with Mexico, and would extend and fortify slavery. 
It is important to mention that this letter, before its 
publication, was read to his classmate Story, who 
listened to it with admiration and assent; so that the 
Jurist and the Philanthropist here joined in upholding 
benign truth. 

In his defence of the liberty of the African race, 
he always invoked the great considerations of justice 
and humanity. The argument of economy, which is 
deemed by some minds the only one pertinent to the 
subject, never presented itself to him. The question 
of profit and loss was absorbed in that of right and 
wrong. His maxim was, " Any thing but slavery ; 
poverty sooner than slavery." But while he exhibited 
this institution in the blackest colors of reprobation, 

* Commonwealth v. Aves, 18 Pick. 211, where it is judicially de- 
clared, that " slavery is contrary to natural right, to the principles of jus- 
tice, humanity, and sound policy." This has become a part of the ju- 
risprudence of Massachusetts. 



59 



as inhuman, unjust, unchristian, unworthy of an age 
of light and of a republic professing freedom, his 
gentle soul found no word of harshness for those 
whom birth, education, and custom have bred in its 
support. He was implacable towards wrong ; but 
used soft words towards wrong-doers. He looked 
forward to the day when they too, encompassed by a 
moral blockade^ invisible to the eye, but more potent 
than navies, and under the influence of increasing 
Christian light, difliised from all the nations, shall 
have the magnanimity to acknowledge the wrong, 
and to set their captives free. 

At the close of his life, he urged with peculiar 
clearness and force the duty — it was of duties that 
he spoke — of the Northern States to free themselves 
from all support of slavery. To this conclusion he 
was driven irresistibly by the ethical principle, that 
what is wrong for an individual is wrong for a state. 
No son of the Pilgrims would hold a fellow-man in 
bondage. Conscience forbids it. No son of the 
Pilgrims can help, through his government, to hold a 
fellow-man in bondage. Conscience equally forbids 
it. We have among us to-day a brother who, re- 
ducing to practice the teachings of Channing and 
the suggestions of his own conscience, has liberated 
the slaves which have fallen to him by inheritance.* 

* Hon. John Gorham Palfrey, Secretary of the Commonwealth of 
Massachusetts, received twenty-two slaves, by inheritance, on the death 
of his father, in October, 1843. They were on a plantation in Louis- 
iana. He lost no time in taking- the necessary steps for their manumis- 
sion. His petition to the legislature of Louisiana for permission to set 
them free within the State was laid on the table by a unanimous vote. 



60 



This act finds a response of gratitude and admiration 
in all our hearts. In asking the Free States to dis- 
connect themselves from all support of slavery, 
Channing wished them to do, as States, what Palfrey 
has done as a man. At the same time he dwelt 
with affectionate care upon the Union. He sought 
to reform, not to destroy; to eradicate, not to over- 
turn ; and he cherished the Union as the mother of 
peace, plenteousness, and joy. 

Such w^ere some of his labors in behalf of human 
liberty. As the mind dwells upon them, it instinct- 
ively recalls the parallel exertions of John Milton. 
He, too, was a defender of liberty. His Defence of 
the People of England drew to him, living, a wider 
homage than his sublime epic. But Channing's 
labors were of a higher order, more instinct with 
Christian love, more truly worthy of renown. Mil- 
ton's De/ensio pro populo Anglicano was in behalf of 
the political freedom of the English people, supposed 
at that time to number about four and a half mil- 
lions. It was written after the " bawble " of royalty 
had been removed, and in the confidence that his 
cause was triumphantly established beneath the pro- 
tecting genius of Cromwell. Channing's Defensio pro 
popido Jfricano was in behalf of the personal freedom 
of three millions of his fellow-men, who were held in 
abject bondage, none of whom knew that his eloquent 

Against many impediments, and at considerable cost, he persevered in his 
determination, and by a personal visit to the State speeded the act. 
Eighteen fellow-men, who had been slaves, have been established by his 
beneficence in Massachusetts and New York. Four others have been 
allowed to remain, as freemen, in Louisiana. 



61 



pen was pleading their cause. The labors of Milton 
caused his blindness ; those of Channing exposed him 
to the shafts of obloquy and calumny. How truly 
might the Philanthropist have exclaimed, in the ex- 
alted words of the Sonnet to Cyriac Skinner, — 

" What supports me, dost thou ask? 
The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied 
In Uberiy^s defence, my noble task, 
Of which all Europe rings from side to side.'^ 

The same spirit of humanity and justice, which 
animated him in defence of liberty, also inspired his 
exertions for the abolition of the barbarous Institu- 
tion of War. When I call war an institution, I mean 
the legalized, technical war, sanctioned, explained 
and defined by the law of nations, as a mode of de- 
termining questions of right. I mean war, the 
arbitrator, the umpire of right, the Ordeal by Bat- 
tle, deliberately continued in this age of Christianity 
and civilization, as the means of justice between na- 
tions. Slavery is an institution sustained by our 
private municipal law. War is an institution sus- 
tained by the law of nations and the custom of man- 
kind. Both are relics of the early ages, and have 
their root in violence and wrong. 

And here the principle, already considered, that 
nations and individuals are bound by one and the 
same rule of right, applies with unmistakable 
force. Our civilization brands the Trial by Battle, 
by which justice in the early ages was determined 
between individuals, as monstrous and impious ;* and 

* Montesquieu calls it monstrous. Esprit des Lois, Liv. 28, cap. 
20. An early king of the Lombards, Luitprand, recognized its impiety, 



62 



it refuses to recognize any glory in the successful 
combatants. Christianity turns from these scenes of 
strife, as abhorrent to her highest injunctions. And 
is it right for nations to continue a usage, defined and 
estabhshed by a code of laws, which is monstrous and 
impious in individuals ? The conscience answers, 
No. 

It will be perceived that this view of the character 
of war leaves undisturbed that sublime question of 
Christian ethics, — - existing only in Christian ethics, — 
whether the asserted right of self-defence is con- 
sistent with the meekness, the longsuffering, the 
submission of Christ. Channing thought it was. 
It is sufficient that war, when regarded as an in- 
stitution, sanctioned by the law of nations as a 
judicial combat, raises no such question, involves no 
such right. When, in our age, two nations, after 
mutual preparations, continued perhaps through many 
years, appeal to war and invoke the God of battles, 
they voluntarily adopt this unchristian umpirage of 
right ; nor can either side strongly plead the over- 
ruling necessity, on which alone the right of self- 
defence is founded. Self-defence is independent of 
law ; it knows no law ; it springs from the tempest- 
uous urgency of the moment, which brooks neither 
circumscription nor delay. Define it, give it laws, 
circumscribe it by a code, invest it with form, re- 
while he vindicated it on the same ground on which the institution 
of war is sometimes maintained. " Sed propter consuetudinem gentis 
nostras Longobardorum legem impiam vetare non possumus." Muratori, 
Rerum Italic. Script., Tom. 2, p. 65. 



63 



fine it by punctilio, and it becomes the Duel, And 
modern war, with its innumerable rules, regulations, 
limitations and refinements, is the Duel of JYations, 

But these nations are communities of Christian 
brothers. War is, therefore, a duel between brothers.* 
In this light, its impiety finds apt illustration in the 
Past. Far away in the early period of time, where 
the uncertain hues of Poetry blend with the serener 
light of History, our eyes discern the fatal contest 
between those two brothers, Eteocles and Polynices. 
No scene fills the mind with deeper aversion ; we 
do not inquire which of them was in the right. The 
soul says, in bitterness and sorrow, both were wrong, 
and refuses to discriminate between their degrees of 
guilt. A just and enlightened public opinion, hereafter 
regarding the feuds and wars of mankind, shall con- 
demn both sides as wrong, shall deem all wars as 
fratricidal, and shall see in every battle-field a scene 
from which to avert the countenance, as from that 
dismal duel beneath the walls of Grecian Thebes. 

To hasten this condition of the public mind Chan- 
ning beneficently labored. With a soul that kindled 
at the recital of every act of magnanimous virtue, of 
every deed of self-sacrifice in a righteous cause, his 
clear Christian judgment saw the mockery of what is 
called military glory, whether in ancient thunder- 
bolts of war, or in the career of modern conquest. 
He saw that the fairest flowers cannot bloom in a 

* " Plato civile bellumesse putat, quod GraecigeruntadversusGrascos. 
At Christian us Christiano proprius junctus est, quam civis civi, quam 
frater fratri. " — Erasmi Epist., Lib. XXIL, Epist. 16. 



64 



soil moistened by human blood. He saw that to 
overcome evil by bullets and bayonets was less great 
and glorious than to overcome it by good. He 
saw that the courage of the camp was inferior to 
the Christian fortitude of patience, resignation, and 
forgiveness of evil, — as the spirit which scourged and 
crucified the Saviour was less divine than that which 
murmured, " Father, forgive them, for they know not 
what they do." 

With fearless pen he arraigned that giant criminal, 
Napoleon Bonaparte. Witnesses came from all his 
fields of blood ; and the Pyramids of Egypt, the coast 
of Palestine, the plains of Italy, the snows of Russia, 
the fields of Austria, Prussia, of all Europe, sent 
forth their uncoffined hosts to bear testimony against 
the glory of their chief, and to call for the abolition 
of that institution in whose service they miserably 
perished. Never before was grand offender arraigned 
by such a voice, in the name of humanity and free- 
dom. The sentence of degradation which Channing 
has passed, confirmed as it will be by coming genera- 
tions, shall darken the name of the warrior more than 
any defeat of his arms or compelled abdication of his 
power. 

By these labors Channing has enrolled himself 
among the benefactors of the world. He has helped 
the coming of that glad day, which Literature, 
with generous speech. Commerce, with white-winged 
ships, and Science, with fiery engines of speed and 
magical net- work of human thought, are all hastening, 
when the inimical distinctions of countries shall dis- 



65 



appear, when the swollen nationalities of the earth, 
no longer vexed by the passions of mankind, shall 
subside to one broad level of humanity, " illimitable 
and without bound " ; as the mountain waves, which 
seem to peer into the skies, sink, when the storm is 
lulled, to an undisturbed expanse, wherein are mirrored 
the sun and stars and all the imagery of heaven. 

These causes Channing upheld and commended 
with rare eloquence, both of tongue and pen. From 
lack of point, and the firm divisions of a more logical 
mind, his character is not to be seen in single pas- 
sages, sentences, or phrases, but in the continuous 
and harmonious treatment of his subject. And yet 
everywhere the same spirit is discerned. His style,; 
was not formal or architectural in its shape or pro-i 
portions ; but natural and fluent, like a river. * Other 
writers seem to construct, to build their thoughts ; but 
his are an unbroken rolling stream. If we should 
seek a parallel for him as a writer, we must turn our 
backs upon England, and repair with our Jurist to 
France. Meditating on the high thoughts of Pas- 
cal, the persuasive sweetness of Fenelon, the con- 
stant and comprehensive benevolence of Castel St. 
Pierre, we may be reminded of Channing. 

With few of the physical attributes which belong 
to the orator, he was an orator of surpassing grace. 
His soul tabernacled in a body that seemed little 
more than a filament of clay. He was small in stat- 
ure ; but when he spoke, his person seemed to di- 
late with the majesty of his thoughts ; as the Her- 



66 



cules of Ljsippus, a marvel of ancient art, though 
not more than a foot in height, revived in the mind 
the superhuman strength which overcame the Ne- 
mean lion ; — 

" Deus ille, Deus ; seseque videndum 
Indulsit, Lysippe, tibi, parvusque videri 
Sentirique ingens.'" * 

His voice was soft and musical, not loud or full in 
its tones ; and jet, like conscience, it made itself 
heard in the inmost chambers of the soul. His elo- 
quence was that of gentleness and persuasion, pleading 
for religion, humanity, and justice. He did not thun- 
der or lighten. The rude elemental forces furnish no 
proper image of his power. His words descended, 
like sunshine, upon the souls of his hearers, and 
under their genial influence the hard in heart were 
softened, while the closely hugged mantle of preju- 
dice and error was allowed to fall to the earth. 

His eloquence had not the form and fashion of 
forensic efforts or parliamentary debates. It ascend- 
ed above these, into an atmosphere as yet unat- 
tempted in practical hfe. Whenever he spoke or 
wrote, it was w^ith the highest aims ; not for display, 
not to advance himself, not for any selfish purpose, 
not in human strife, not in any ignoble question 
of dollars and cents ; but in the high service of re- 
ligion and benevolence, of love of God and man. 
Here, indeed, are the highest sources of eloquence. 
Eloquence has been called action ; but it is not this 
alone; it is action, action, action, in noble, godlike 

* Statius, Silv., Lib. IV., Eclog. 6. 



67 



causes, for the good of all. It cannot be displayed, 
in purest perfection, in a personal pursuit of dishonest 
guardians, or a selfish strife for a crown ; not in the 
defence of a murderer, or in invectives hurled at a 
conspirator. These are not the highest founts of elo- 
quence. The w^aters may flow through meadows 
enamelled with flowers, that fringe their sparkling 
surface ; but the stream descending from the moun- 
tains, whose tops of dazzling whiteness are hidden in 
the heavens, will burst with fresher and more power- 
ful current on its way to the sea. 

Such was our Philanthropist. As he advanced in 
life, his enthusiasm seemed to brighten, his soul put 
forth fresh blossoms of hope, his mind opened to new 
truths. Age brings experience ; but, except in some 
few constitutions of rare felicity, it renders the mind 
indifferent to what is new, particularly in moral truth. 
The last months of his life were passed amid the 
heights of Berkshire, with a people to whom may be 
applied what Bentivoglio said of Switzerland, — 
" Their mountains become them, and they become 
their mountains." It was to them that he volun- 
teered, on the 1st of August, 1842, to deliver an ad- 
dress, in commemoration of that great moral victory, 
the peaceful emancipation of their slaves in the West 
Indies by the British government. These were the 
last public words from his lips. His final benediction, 
ere he was yet translated, was on the slave. His 
spirit, as it took its flight, seemed to say, nay, it still 
says. Remember the Slave, 



68 



Thus have I attempted, humblj and affectionately, 
to hold before jou the images of our departed brothers, 
while I dwelt on the great causes in which their lives 
were made manifest. Servants of Knowledge, of Jus- 
tice, of Beauty, of Love, they have ascended to the 
great Source of Knowledge, Justice, Beauty, Love. 
Each of our brothers is removed ; but though dead, 
yet speaketh, informing our understandings, strength- 
ening our sense of justice, refining our tastes, enlarging 
our sympathies. The body dies ; but the page of the 
Scholar, the interpretation of the Jurist, the creation 
of the Artist, the beneficence of the Philanthropist, 
cannot die. 

I have dwelt upon their lives and characters, less in 
grief for what we have lost, than in gratitude for what 
we so long possessed, and still retain, in their pre- 
cious example. In proud recollection of her departed 
children, Alma Mater might well exclaim, in those 
touching words of parental grief, that she would not 
give her dead sons for any living sons in Christen- 
dom. Pickering, Story, AUston, Channing ! A grand 
Quaternion ! Each, in his peculiar sphere, was fore- 
most in his country. Each might have said, what the 
modesty of Demosthenes did not forbid him to boast, 
that through him his country had been crowned abroad. 
Their labors were wide as the Commonwealth of Let- 
ters, Laws, Art, Humanity, and have found accept- 
ance wherever these have dominion. 

Their lives, which overflow with instruction, teach 
one great and commanding lesson, which speaks alike 
to those of every calling and pursuit, — not to live for 



69 



ourselves alone. They lived for Knowledge, Justice, 
Beauty, Humanity. Withdrawing from the strifes of 
the world, from the allurements of office, and the rage 
for gain, they consecrated themselves to the pursuit of 
excellence, and each, in his own vocation, to beneficent 
labor. They were all philanthropists ; for the labors 
of all have promoted the welfare and happiness of 
mankind. 

In the contemplation of their generous, unselfish 
lives, we feel the insignificance of office and wealth, 
which men so hotly pursue. What is office ? and 
what is wealth ? They are the expressions and rep- 
resentatives of what is present and fleeting only, in- 
vesting their possessor, perhaps, with a brief and local 
regard. But let this not be exaggerated ; let it not be 
confounded with the serene fame which is the reflec- 
tion of high labors in great causes. The street lights, 
within the circle of their nightly scintillation, seem to 
outshine the distant stars, observed of men in all lands 
and times ; but gas-lamps are not to be mistaken for 
the celestial luminaries. They who live only for 
wealth, and the things of this world, follow shadows, 
neglecting the great realities which are eternal on 
earth and in heaven. After the perturbations of life, 
all its accumulated possessions must be resigned, ex- 
cept those alone which have been devoted to God 
and mankind. What we do for ourselves perishes 
with this mortal dust ; what we do for others lives in 
the grateful hearts of all who have felt the benefaction. 
Worms may destroy the body, but they cannot con- 
sume such a fame. It is fondly cherished on earth, 
and never forgotten in heaven. 



70 



The grand fundamental law of Humanity is the 
good of the whole human family, its happiness, its 
development, its progress. In this cause. Knowledge, 
Jurisprudence, Art, Philanthropy, all concur. They 
are the influences, more puissant than the sword, 
which ^shall lead mankind from the bondage of error 
into that service which is perfect ^freedom. 

" HaB tibi erunt artes, pacisque imponere morem.''^ * 

Our departed brothers join in summoning you to this 
gladsome obedience. Their examples speak for them. 
Go forth into the many mansions of the house of life : 
scholars ! store them with learning ; jurists ! build 
them with justice ; artists! adorn them with beauty; 
philanthropists ! let them resound with love. Be ser- 
vants of truth and duty, each in his vocation. Be sin- 
cere, pure in heart, earnest, enthusiastic. A virtuous 
enthusiasm is always self-forgetful and noble. It is the 
only inspiration now vouchsafed to man. Like Picker- 
ing, blend humility with learning. Like Story, ascend 
above the present, in place and time. Like Allston, 
regard fame only as the eternal shadow of excellence. 
Like Channing, bend in adoration before the right. 
Cultivate alike the wisdom of experience and the wis- 
dom of hope. Mindful of the Future, do not neglect 
the Past ; awed by the majesty of Antiquity, turn not 
with indifference from the Future. True wisdom looks 
to the ages before us, as well as behind us. Like the 

*-^neis VI., 852. — Dryden, in his translation of this passage, intro- 
duces an element which is not in the original : — 

" The fettered slave set free^ 
These are imperial arts, and worthy thee !" 



71 



Janus of the Capitol, one front thoughtfully regards 
the Past, rich with experience, with memories, with 
the priceless traditions of truth and virtue ; the other 
is earnestly directed to the All Hail Hereafter, richer 
still with its transcendent hopes and unfulfilled proph- 
ecies. 

We stand on the threshold of a new age, which is 
preparing to recognize new influences. The ancient 
divinities of Violence and Wrong are retreating to 
their kindred darkness. The sun of our moral uni- 
verse is entering a new ecliptic, no longer deformed 
by those images of animal rage. Cancer, Taurus, Leo, 
Sagittarius, but beaming with the mild radiance of 
those heavenly signs. Faith, Hope, and Charity. 

" There 's a fount about to stream, 
There 's a light about to beam, 
There 's a warmth about to glow. 
There 's a flower about to blow ; 
There 's a midnight blackness changing 

Into gray ; 
Men of thought, and men of action. 
Clear the way. 

" Aid the dawning, tongue and pen; 
Aid it, hopes of honest men ; 
Aid it, paper ; aid it, type ; 
Aid it, for the hour is ripe. 
And our earnest must not slacken 

Into play ; 
Men of thought, and men of action, 

Clear the way.'''' * 

The age of Chivalry has gone. An age of Human- 
ity has come. The Horse, which gave the name to 



* Voices from the Crowd, by Charles Mackay. 



72 



the first, now yields to Man the foremost place. In 
serving him, in doing him good, in contributing to his 
welfare and elevation, there are fields of bloodless tri- 
umph, nobler far than any in which Bayard or Du 
Guesclin ever conquered. Here are spaces of labor 
wide as the world, lofty as heaven. Let me say, then, 
in the benison which was bestowed upon the youthful 
knight, — Scholars ! jurists ! artists ! philanthropists ! 
heroes of a Christian age, companions of a celes- 
tial knighthood, "Go forth, be brave, loyal, and suc- 
cessful ! " 

And may it be our office to-day to light a fresh 
beacon-fire on the venerable walls of Harvard, sacred 
to Truth, to Christ, and the Church,* — to Truth Im- 
mortal, to Christ the Comforter, to the Holy Church 
Universal. Let the flame spread from steeple to stee- 
ple, from hill to hill, from island to island, from con- 
tinent to continent, till the long lineage of fires shall 
illumine all the nations of the earth, animating them 
to the holy contests of Knowledge, Justice, Beauty, 
Love. 

*The legend on the early seal of Harvard University was Veritas. 
The present legend is Christo et Ecdesia. 



